My Mother Knew Fun

            My mother loved to have fun.  She knew how to have fun and she made sure others had fun with her.  I guess I’ve always know that, but it only recently solidified into an organized thought.

            My family had so many good traditions and I can track almost all of them to my mother.  She knew how to throw a Christmas decorating party that everyone wanted to be part of.  We made candy –tons of it.  It would last throughout our Christmas celebration.  It would be given as gifts and be set out in small bowls for a quick yummy treat.  We decorated the tree and the house.  We made popcorn ropes and tinfoil ropes and even colored paper ropes for the less visible spots.  And we ended it with singing and dancing and children dropping off as the sugar left and the night wore on.  It was a party noone wanted to end.

            She hosted grand New Years Dinners with tables that stretched the long length of our dining room and living room all set in glass dishes and as close to matching silverware as she could produce.  Eventually she outfitted her table with finery that matched, but in the early days, noone used a paper or plastic plate.  Plentiful deserts and left-overs followed football games and naps and games of horse or sledding depending on the weather with board games or puzzles taking space in various parts of the house.  And yes the evening ended with music and dancing.

            By the time I was truly aware, my dad loved camping, but it was my mother who taught him to love it.  He’d slept under the stars with cattle and horses, and found no great joy in it.  But my mom introduced him to a different outdoor experience.  We didn’t have all the best and latest camp gear, but I must say I never missed it.  Mom made do.  We preferred the undeveloped camp site, probably for thrift in the early days, but eventually just because it was closer to nature and God. 

            She always dug a hole and put some kind of barrier up, be it sheets or tarps so that people could do their business in a less precarious fashion.  She would stretch rope from tree to tree to hang out towels, dishrags and wet clothes.  She organized and she managed delightfully with very little, frequently two weeks at a time.  We had an old wash tub for clothes and an occasional bath.  And frequently we left behind little rock gardens with indigenous plants arranged creatively when we pulled up stakes and headed for home.

            I suppose it was because she was a dreamer of sorts.  But she found hilarious fun in the best spots.  When I was a preteen to a young teen she taught a girls’ Sunday school class.  But it wasn’t a run of the mill type experience for ‘her girls’.  They had fashion shows and dress up parties and hat making parties.  They had sleep-overs and barbeques and camping trips and excursions to the park. Even the trip to serve the elderly in a convalescent home was done with great flare and a good amount of fun.  No month of the year remained unadorned by some kind of special event.  She supplied the idea and the opportunity and the girls just had fun.  Being her daughter, I got to have fun for more than one year.

            As the second tier of family increased, she instituted “Happy Day” celebrations.  She couldn’t always spend the actual birthday with each grandchild, so she selected a day and spent it creating a fairytale aura around that child for that happy day.  It was based on the child’s want to –within reason.  The grand children knew mom was good for a good time and maybe some pretty cool stuff in the offing.

            I always wanted to create fantastic traditions for my children and grandchildren, but sadly, it didn’t really go the way I planned.  I was not good at fun like my mom was.  I’ve had my share of ‘fun’, I have some pretty cool memories with friends and family, but I was never the awesome curator of fun that my mom was.  Her ‘fun’ days have moved into the realm of memory and family history.  Ah, but what memories to be held.